Ars speaks with CCP's CTO about the PS3 exclusive Dust 514, and how the first- …

Halldor Fannar, CTO at CCP, has few illusions about what Dust 514 means for EVE Online, the studio's sci-fi/spaceship MMO. The PlayStation Network exclusive is designed to Interact concurrently and persistently with EVE Online, with players taking part in the PC MMO's stories and struggles. This is a major risk for the brand.

"PC players are really worried about what it could do, and how it could upset things," Fannar said, "but we need to energize the world by disrupting it every once in a while." Dust 514 is the first of a few things CCP is working on to broaden the appeal of the EVE universe. Fannar is acutely aware of human nature's aversion to change. Plenty of existing fans are on board with the expanding universe, and while that pleases Fannar, he clarified that Dust "isn't designed for them." PC gamers aren't uninvited, they just aren't the target audience.

Whether they want it is irrelevant, though. Dust is going to hurt them, it's going to help them, and it's going to change EVE. Dust 514 is an online-only console shooter that speaks to a PC counterpart, but the interactions (and consequences) run deep.

Players enter the world as surface-based infantrymen with larger goals than logging out with a positive kill/death ratio. Soldiers fit into the existing social structure of the universe by forming corporations that cross into both EVE and Dust. Completing contracts issued by other players helps feed the economy, and aids in funding and supporting increasingly capable corporations. Eventually, objectives evolve into much larger events.

"CCP is a company that believes in huge consequences," Fannar said. "That's how you give combat a meaning. We expect some people will be turned off by that, but we want people to have feelings that are real." EVE, while not an immediately accessible game for most, certainly has its fair share of interesting emergent stories. In certain cases, players have spent actual, real-life years infiltrating enemy organizations for the express purpose of imploding its internal economy. Spaceships are destroyed permanently, bank accounts are drained completely, and those affected are left utterly devastated. Dust players stand to lose much as well.

First-person shooters require respawning simply by the nature of their action-oriented play. Players going head-to-head are going to kill each other, and rolling a new space marine every five to 30 seconds is anything but appealing. Spending earned cash on cloning is the consequence, so soldiers are encouraged to play smart and to work together, if only for financial reasons. Consequences branch beyond some lost coin in Dust 514, though.

Dust 514

Fannar explained that soldiers could outright rule over an entire planet, cutting off another corporation's much-needed resources for survival. More important than this, though, is the crossover consequences. EVE players can attack planets from orbit, and Dust players can retaliate in real-time. Console gamers, in a move CCP suspects will be popular with the griefing-obsessed FPS crowd, can also destroy resources EVE players need to harvest. From here, a number of things could happen: those soldiers can move on with their paycheck, pave the way for a hiring EVE corporation to take the territory, or claim an area for themselves.

To avoid an influx of abusive console gamers, Fannar said CCP is "turning the faucet on slowly so we don't topple what's already in EVE." Dust 514 will permit players to join in small bursts at first, with limited and preferred registration opening up later this year. Existing EVE Online customers and PlayStation Plus subscribers get preferential treatment before everyone else trickles in. After six months of testing the waters, experimenting with orbital artillery battles, and balancing the between-game consequences, Dust will launch for "essentially free."

Fannar calls the initial download fee a cover charge, a to-be-determined chunk of change just to download the game client. That money is then converted into in-game items and currency, and the game will then monetize itself with microtransactions.

Ideally, Dust is the gateway to the EVE universe for those terrified of EVE. In trying to entice that new audience, Dust is a simpler game. Like in EVE, Dust characters are always training, even when you're not playing.

Dust 514 is a key part in a new initiative to attract more interest to the EVE world. During the Sony press conference at E3 2011, CCP skimmed over an announcement of a Vita version of Dust. Fannar told Ars it wouldn't be the same game as the PlayStation 3 version, but that it would be for "covert applications." What that means is anybody's guess, and that's all he'd say about it. Also, CCP is working on a "dedicated web client for skill training and market transactions." Once again, Fannar couldn't elaborate on the finer details of how it interacts with each game, but we'll see more on this soon.

We're seeing more love between the PlayStation 3 and PC as time goes on, first with Portal 2 and now Dust, and this may light a fire under the feet of other developers waiting to take a stab at something new. With numerous free expansions planned for Dust 514, CCP has a huge undertaking ahead.

Of course, there's always the potential it could collapse under its own weight. Fannar isn't worried about that at all. "When we built EVE, nobody believed we could do it," he said. "We've proven that we can do it, and we can do it again."